Step 01 — Discovery
Auditors were drowning in paper — and nobody had mapped the whole process.
The Sierra Leone Audit Service was managing a national audit function across dozens of ministries using a combination of spreadsheets, paper files, and email chains. Finding, tracking, and resolving audit findings could take months — not because the auditors weren't capable, but because the process architecture was broken.
I conducted discovery sessions with Audit Officers, Senior Auditors, and the Auditor General's office. I also reviewed historical audit reports to understand the volume, nature, and resolution patterns of findings. I mapped every handoff in the process — from finding identification to final sign-off — and counted the manual steps.
The average time from audit finding to documented resolution was 14 weeks. Most of that time was lost not in the actual work, but in chasing confirmations, locating files, and managing email threads across ministries.
The discovery also revealed something commercially important: the same workflow problems existed in every African government audit office I researched. This was not a Sierra Leone problem. It was a sector-wide problem with no modern solution.